


Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven

by poisontaster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-19
Updated: 2006-05-19
Packaged: 2018-04-20 05:59:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4776242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beware strangers bearing gifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inlovewithnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/gifts).



> Set after "Devil's Trap".
> 
>  _Well we made a promise_  
>  We swore we'd always remember  
> No retreat, baby  
> No surrender  
> Like soldiers in the winter's night  
> With a vow to defend  
> No retreat, baby  
> No surrender
> 
>  
> 
> _\--"No Surrender" by Bruce Springsteen_

**Strophe. _let us pray._**

Sam and Dean have never talked about God.

Neither have John and Dean, if it comes to it. Dean is rather iffy on the subject, but he believes in Hell wholeheartedly and with his entire being and he figures that means there almost _has_ to be something on the flip side. Some place for all the spirits they'd laid to rest.

Some place for Mom.

Dean doesn't make a big deal out of it or anything.

Sometimes he wears a plain silver cross with his amulet, under his shirt, where it can't be seen. He doesn't go to services, doesn't recite any more prayers than it takes to bless a weapon or some water. He can count over the decades of the rosary but he doesn't know their meditations or what they mean. And most of the time, when he does enter a church, it's strictly for business.

Most of the time.

**Antistrophe. _blessed art thou and blessed is the fruit of thy womb._**

Like most things in his life, it started with a job.

He doesn't remember how old he was. Young. Young enough to think he was already grown and old enough to go with Dad on a hunt while Sammy played gin and hearts with Caleb. Old enough that Dad left him to stake out the interior while he circled the church and grave yards.

He'd been tired and bored from long hours of nothing happening, made sleepy by the unmoving heat of the interior. It was late; the church was open all hours and where the priest might have looked askance at an adult loitering for hours he seemed inclined to be more forgiving of someone as young as Dean. After he caught himself nodding for the third time, Dean made himself get up from the pew and reconnoiter the church.

The church was old and confusing with back corridors, odd niches and cubicles. Somewhere in what Dean thought was the back northwest corner, he found an enormous alabaster statue of the Virgin Mary, bloodied by the light of dozens and dozens of votives in red glass. A long-haired woman in a flowered dress knelt in front of the altar, touched a long match to a cluster of four unlit candles. The light was kind to her face, but didn't hide the fact that she'd been crying.

He felt obscurely embarrassed to have seen her, as if he'd been trying to peek up her skirt. But when he turned to go, his sneaker scuffed against the stone and she startled, gasping.

"Wait!" she called in accented English, spotting him in the shadows. "Did…did you come to pray too?"

"I…" He came forward.

"Come," she said and held out her hand. "We can pray together."

He took her hand without really quantifying why and she guided him down onto the kneeler. "This one is for my father," she said, indicating the first candle. "And this, my sister Hannah. This is my husband, Rafael, and this one…" Her face softened and melted, the line of her mouth becoming a wave. "This one is for my son." Her hand rested lightly on Dean's shoulder. "His name was Joaquin."

Then she handed him the match and nodded encouragingly. The heat beat against his skin, warm and somehow languid, and brought water to his eyes, half-slitted against the brightness. He could barely see the statue through the haze and in the back of his mind, he heard his father growling words about night blindness, about wasted time, about failure.

Mary smiled down at him with blind, filmy eyes. Dean took the match blindly and whispered her name.

**Strophe. _peace be with you._**

He doesn't talk about it with Dad. He doesn't talk about it period. But after that, it becomes kind of a thing. His thing.

Every little half-ass town, even if it's just a crossroads in the middle of cornfield oceans has some kind of church. Usually more than one, because Catholics and Protestants cannot be expected to endure each other's company any longer than necessary.

And when he can, when he can get away, he goes and lights candles for the dead.

**Antistrophe. _pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death._**

Dean's boots rang out on the stone even though he walks soft. Some churches are like that.

He'd told Sam he was going to get food, a convenient and frequent lie. Lately he wondered if Sam would like to come with him, if it would help, but that would mean talking about it, which puts paid to _that_ idea.

He'd be kind of interested to see Sammy's look though, if he suggested it.

At the Virgin's altar, he knelt. He didn't pray. He'd never really _prayed_. He figured God either knows what's in your heart or he's not all he's cracked up to be. But he always took this moment, to feel that same candle warmth beat against his skin and burn the darkness from his eyes.

For the first time, he lit two candles _(Mom. Dad.)_. The match snapped, brittle, between his fingers.

"Heavy burden, for one so young," a voice, liquid and female, said from behind him and Dean was up from the kneeler in a half second or less, trying to blink the glare from his tearing eyes. A woman slid out from behind a pillar, soft honey-brown fingers tracing over the stone. There were tattoos on the back of her hand, vaguely runic, a little like Indian girls with their hennaed patterns.

She looked like she could be Greek maybe or Rom, dark eyed, dark haired, dark skinned, with very white teeth. Her eyes glittered and her smile was wide, red-lipped and wet, possibly from the swipe of her rose-pink tongue.

"What are you?" Dean asked. It's not question of _who_.

She considered, putting her back and palms to the pillar in the appearance of harmlessness—or at least peace. Her other hand is tattooed as well, subtly different from right to left. "Someone who could help," she admitted finally. "If you like."

She wasn't dead; of that he was sure. Which didn't really narrow the field much. "And why would I need your help? Or…or is this the part where I ask how much for the whole night?"

Her smile was amused. "Because we both know what you are, _hunter_. We both know what you've done. And we both know that the Gates are closed to such as you and I."

"You're not a hunter," Dean said, less a question than a confirmation. He reached for the holster at the small of his back, clearing the .35 and pointing it at her. She didn't move and the smile didn't budge from her pretty pointed face.

"No. But I fulfill my function, same as you. I help those who are too lost to help themselves. I only do it with the living, while you traffic in the dead." She gestured at the bank of votives. "We are not so different, you and I. We take on the load of too many others in addition to our own." She held up the backs of her hands to him, slow and unhurried so as not to provoke.

Seeing them together and so close, he remembered the tattoos that mark them and why they seemed so familiar. _Blood in, blood out_.

"Sin Eater," he said, contempt turning his voice flat. She tipped her head and gestured acknowledgement like an actress taking a bow.

He'd never actually seen a Sin Eater before, though Pastor Jim once told him stories on a night Dad was gone and Sam was sleeping.

"So _this_ is the part where I ask how much?" he repeated snidely and color came up in her high tanned cheeks, even as her eyes sparked in anger.

"Such contempt, for what is freely offered," she jeered. "And even less understanding of the gift it is."

"To be absolved of my sins? Lady, I'd give you indigestion." Dean started to circle left, toward the rows of pews and the central nave. "Besides, I'm kind of a fuck-up. I'd just rack up more sins and I'd hate for such a _lovely_ parting gift to go to waste. Besides, I think it'd be kind of cool to have the high score."

"You will not find Heaven, as you are." She stepped from the pillar after him, though not coming close enough for him to feel truly threatened.

"I'm pretty good where I am, actually. Cool job, sweet car, plenty of ladies…"

"You won't see her again."

That actually stopped him, a jerk like someone pulling hard on his intestines. "Wh…What?"

"Your sins go too deep and are too grievous. You are steeped in them, as in a layer of blood. Why would you not want to be free of them? She loved you so much…why would you not want to see her face again, be with her again?"

Before Lawrence, Dean's memories of his mom had been thin and faded, bleached by time. After, though, he'd felt like she was seared into his mind like the fire that consumed her, perfect, beautiful and ever young. He could forget nothing about her now, even if he wanted to. Not even her smell.

The Sin Eater came closer yet, a soft and deliberate prowl, one hand reaching out to touch. She was most of the way to his skin, so close he could feel the strange fever heat of her, when his hand shot up and grabbed her wrist, twisting the bone.

She was still mostly human, or as alike as to make no difference. The crushing grip made her cry out and her legs buckle, tumbling her to the stone. "Don’t touch me."

"I can see it in you!" The Sin Eater tossed her hair back from her face, eyes wide and startled in her face. "I can see how much you miss her, how much you long for it, for her, for absolution…" She cut off as his hand squeezed tighter, grinding the bones again. Still, she persisted. "Why? Why _not_? It costs you nothing and gives you everything. Why would you not?"

Dean put his face very close to hers, speaking through teeth clenched so tight he can feel it in his temples and down his spine. "Because I earned them," he gritted. "And they're mine."

He flung her away from him then and left her sobbing as he stalked out of the church altogether.

**Strophe. _forever and ever amen._**

This is what Dean figures:

He doesn't know a lot about the Church, but certain concepts are indelibly printed across what they are and what they do, stamping them like a maker's mark. Sin, absolution, retribution.

You don't wash off the blood on your hands, you carry it. You carry it through Hell and back and at the end of the day, when God or whoever asks you how you lived, what you've done, you hold them out and say _this_.

You don't back off and you don't back down. Not even for God.

Maybe especially then.


End file.
